Learning Blender : Installing Old Software is a Hassle

I’m terribly eager to start my first Second Life object or outfit, but there’s no use in that if I don’t know how to use blender. Yes, blender is the program I’m using. Its free and seems to have a good following and a lot of options. There are a ton of different versions however, and I anticipate this being a bit of an issue when it comes to following tutorials. But we shall see!

I want to be incredibly thorough in this learning process because I really do want this knowledge to stick, and I want to make sure I have all of the tools to make great clothing instead of just average clothing when the time comes.

Well, i was just about ready to jump into sl clothing tutorials when I just searched google for a tutorial leading me to this page.

As Maeve Balfour says:

The reason I ask is that if you are totally new to mesh creation, you really MUST learn the overall workflow involved with mesh creation in general before you even consider creating mesh clothing. You would be doing yourself a huge disservice if you don’t, and setting yourself up for a world of frustration.

Alright Maeve, I’m sold. I followed her link to Canned Mushrooms. This guy has HUNDREDS of videos on how to work with modeling software, so naturally – overwhelmed. But obviously, we’re sticking with the Blender ones.

Think of this process as taking a full semester class on JUST BLENDER. It really doesn’t matter which blender videos you watch, the point is to just absorb all of the information you can, and once we feel like we can make a pretty good object, we’ll dig into the clothing stuff.

Here’s the playlist I’m tackling first: Blender 29 videos. (Starting at the bottom with 0001)

So today I’m starting, just picking the software and installing. Easy. Well, unfortunately these videos were made in 2009, which is quite a few releases back. To make things simpler, I decided to follow with the exact same software he is using in the videos. Then I can go back later and adapt to the new technology.

I could see in the video that he was using Version 2.48a, but he was on a mac. I’m on windows, no big deal. Version 2.48 can be downloaded Here.

I downloaded blender-2.48a-windows64.zip first. It was just a folder of files, no installing needed. But when I clicked on Blender it said I needed Python on my computer and closed. I figured there was another version that didn’t require this.

I uninstalled and then downloaded blender-2.48a-windows.exe, which installed fine – but still said I needed python. Ugh. I downloaded version 2.7.8, still didn’t work. Then I downloaded the version blender was nagging me about, 2.5.2, still no go.

What am I doing wrong?

A quick google search suggested I was mixing 32 bit and 64 bit programs. Python was definitely AMD64, so I realized my second download of blender was 32. I went back to the 64 file and bam, we’re finally rolling.

I still have a pesky command prompt looking window that stays open and lets me know that python is working, and when i click out of it the program closes. I’m not going to worry about that right now, but I’ll eventually figure out why that’s happening.

Now on to the blending!